Is there such a thing as a Fourth Degree Burn?

The Robocop remake trailer finally hit the internet and they used a phrase I’d never heard before, nor did I believe even existed: fourth degree burn.

“In medical reference there are four types of burn, but in law there are six. It seems the terms come about from the professional world and their terminology.”

I always thought there were only three degrees of burns: bad, worse, and worst. I mean, there’s no such thing as the “worster” burn. Screenwriters have been known to fabricate impossible degrees of extremeness as a convenient way to assert the “worse than anything in the universe ever” factor, and I get that. But fourth degree burns? It just sounds…dubious, incredulous, even inconceivable. But, as it turns out, with a little research and a lot of curiosity you can find out quite bit about fourth degree burns. Okay, that’s a lie. There’s not much on this topic.

Depending on who you ask, there are either three, four, or even six degrees of burns (no one will say there are only five, because as we all know, five is right out). The University of New Mexico classifies a fourth degree burn as:

Full thickness that extends into muscle and bone.

However, other sources such as StudyHealth.com and the Journal of Burn Care and Research from Lippincott Williams & Wilkins claim that the “extending into muscle and bone” part can be broken down further into three more degrees of burns, for a total of six:

FIRST DEGREE

The top layer of skin (epidermis) is burned.

SECOND DEGREE

The burn reaches into the middle layers of the dermis (papillary to reticular).

THIRD DEGREE

The entire thickness of the dermis is burned. Skin grafts are needed.

FOURTH DEGREE

The burn extends through the skin to the ligaments and tendons beneath. Major surgery and possible amputation are recommended for recovery.

FIFTH DEGREE

The burn continues past the skin, ligaments, and tendons all the way into the muscle, almost reaching bone. Amputation is necessary, as the burned area is beyond repair.

SIXTH DEGREE

The burn is so deep that it destroys the bone and obliterates everything else in its way. This type of burn has a 0% survival rate.

As our friend Jack Waite said, “It seems that in medical reference there are four types of burn, but in law there are six. It seems the terms come about from the professional world and their terminology.” Since laws change from place to place and from time to time, it’s going to be safer to go with just the four degrees in everyday conversation; but knowing the difference between all six might come in handy one day too. Perhaps the reason that fifth and sixth degree burns get so little love is that they almost always kill people, so there’s really no point in differentiating between them. Who knows?

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